New Faces: Discover Your New Favourite Cockpit Maker

Here at Cockpit, we have a long history of championing craft and providing essential support to both established makers and up-and-coming talent. We’re deeply invested in our community, whose more than 160 members include the best of the best in craft!

Because it can be tricky to keep track of the many faces of Cockpit, we’re launching NEW FACES – a quarterly Journal series where we introduce you to the makers and awardees who have taken up studios spaces over the last few months. From ceramics to jewellery to textiles to bookbinding and everything in between, we guarantee there’s at least one maker whose work will catch your eye.

So check out their maker profiles on our website, subscribe to their mailing lists, and follow them on social media. It’s time to discover your new favourite Cockpit maker!

Meet the NEW FACES of Cockpit from Autumn/Winter 2023:

Ama Adansi-Pipim

Ama Adansi-Pipim is a designer-maker focused on exploring themes of belonging, connection and the importance of home. The creator behind A Maker’s Arc, Ama’s artistic practice celebrates our positive responses to these themes by creating ceramic ceremonial vessels and collectable object art. Inspired by her Ghanaian heritage and British upbringing, her forms represent everyday pathways back home interwoven with modernity and her cultural narrative.

Barnaby Horn

Barnaby Horn joined Cockpit on the 2023 Feltmakers’ Award. He is a milliner and multidisciplinary artist in the drag and queer art scene, whose surreal and provocative work incorporates elements of sculpture, collage, digital projection and performance. His millinery is typically the result of experimentation, world building and overlapping references from queer culture, art history and the rave. Barnaby has designed millinery for RuPaul’s Drag Race, Drag SOS, various dance companies and for the red carpet at the Oscars.

Grant McCaig

Grand McCaig is a Scottish jeweller, silversmith and educator. Using the traditional techniques of the silversmith as his foundation, Grant builds pieces that explore the relationship between functionality and self-expression, taking an organic approach to find extraordinary beauty in metals and the idea of function and preciousness associated with materials such as silver. Grant’s work is held in The Scottish Gallery, and he is a senior lecturer at UCA in silversmithing, goldsmithing and jewellery.

Jessie White

Jessie White joined Cockpit on the 2023 Leathersellers’ Award. She is a designer, leatherworker and sculptor, whose work is driven by the desire to tell stories through the exploration of new materials, processes and craft techniques. Jessie’s work is a collection of traditional saddlery techniques combined with a love of form, sculpture and the desire to create something bold and innovative. Originally from Scotland, Jessie studied at London College of Fashion before gaining eight years of experience working in design studios in London.

Phoebe English

Phoebe English is the founder of the eponymous award-winning sustainable circular fashion studio. The Phoebe English Studio has dual roots in textile craftsmanship and reduced environmental impact: aiming to develop ways of working with design, and its surrounding systems, that align within the realities of our planetary limitations. Phoebe’s work is held in the archives of the V&A and the National Museums of Scotland, and in 2022, she received The Marie Claire Sustainability Award for Best Sustainable Designer Brand.

Rebecca Penrice

Rebecca Penrice joined Cockpit on the 2023 Dyers’ Company Award. She is textile artist, mainly making clothing and accessories that are often inspired by the illustrations and paintings she creates as part of her development process. She uses pleating and smocking techniques in her work, as a way to add interest and uniqueness to classic materials such as gingham.

Samuel Waterhouse

Samuel Waterhouse is an award-winning jeweller and silversmith whose contemporary one-off pieces are inspired by antiquity, particularly ancient painting, metalwork and ceramics. He specialises in using a personal adaptation of the Korean technique Keum-boo in which he creates and applies various colours of gold to his silverware. Originally from Northumberland, Samuel relocated from Sheffield to London specifically to have a studio at Cockpit.

Sim Orme

Sim Orme joined Cockpit on the 2023 Leathersellers’ Award. They are a bookbinder specialising in fine binding, with a focus on full leather/vellum fine bindings. Sim attained a BA in Book Arts and Design at London College of Communication, after which they worked at several renowned binderies, including the Wyvern Bindery, Shepherd’s and Bookworks. They trained at The Royal Bindery in Windsor Castle for a year, as the last incumbent of the Queen’s Bindery Apprenticeship Scheme.

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Explore the directory of Cockpit makers here.